


Nine Lives

by deathwailart



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Gen, Implied Relationships, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 11:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1856599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was wrong to call it the Nine Lives.  </p>
<p>It's an omen now; everyone is so sure it means the number of Kaiju it will take down and they wonder what then, will the war end with those nine lives or will it mean something else, Altaïr retiring perhaps and taking Al Mualim's place as the man in charge or will it mean his death, that the ninth life will take his too.  Altaïr has a different opinion on those lives, that they are not kaiju but human, not always lives taken but lives forever changed by the war, by his actions.  He lists them off sometimes on his fingers as though they're not flashing through his head in the drift each and every time.</p>
<p>Written for a prompt: Pacific Rim + Altair and Maria as Jaeger pilots</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nine Lives

He was wrong to call it the Nine Lives.  
  
It's an omen now; everyone is so sure it means the number of Kaiju it will take down and they wonder what then, will the war end with those nine lives or will it mean something else, Altaïr retiring perhaps and taking Al Mualim's place as the man in charge or will it mean his death, that the ninth life will take his too. Altaïr has a different opinion on those lives, that they are not kaiju but human, not always lives taken but lives forever changed by the war, by his actions. He lists them off sometimes on his fingers as though they're not flashing through his head in the drift each and every time.  
  
There is Maud, his mother. Gone bringing him into this world, a subject his father never wished to speak of too often and Altaïr was too young to really ask more than why he didn't have a mother. Not even a photograph to know her by either, the home he grew up in destroyed after he was evacuated with all the rest when the kaiju pressed inland in those early days, when nukes were all they had to stop them. Whenever he looks into a mirror he wonders at what came from her. His hands? His eyes? What did she give to him when he slept and grew beneath her heart, father's hand resting on her belly, over his back. No matter how old he grows, not even when he becomes a father himself and cups a hand over the growing swell of his wife's belly does the question leave him.  
  
He came into this world with death, a neat single score against his name.  
  
There is Umar, his father. The day they lost the house – they, he doesn't know why he thinks of it that way really, he was just a boy and he remembers wanting his room with all the bright and colourful things that are absent but for red through the rest of his life – was the day his father piloted what turned into a suicide mission. Al Mualim's hand heavy on his shoulder as he told him his father was gone, that he sacrificed his life for so many more, that he was a hero, do not forget that. Ahmad Sofian lingers at the edges of the memories, his mouth a thin hard line, his hands shaking.  
  
(Ahmad comes later. He buries it deep. Buries it deep like Al Mualim tells him to especially after that night. _You are to be as brothers_ , he instructs and gestures to Abbas. It is meant to be the partnership that brings victory then. The next step. The future.  
  
But later. Much later.)  
  
There is Adha, the first woman he ever loved. Adha who worked at the university and specialised in antiques, who lectured in ancient cultures and of the sea. The Kaiju cult who came for her. Who believed she knew more than she did and that there was some ancient knowledge in her or that she would join with them; once he had laid his head in her lap as she stroked her fingers through his hair and murmured in low whispers of fragments and ancient bloodlines almost lost. At times even he thought her to be conjured out of a dream, parchment and ink, wind and salt. Adha with her laughter and he saw a life for them that stretched out to the horizon. He should have known better. Nothing good ever comes from the sea.  
  
There is Kadar, Malik's younger brother. A two Jaeger drop, himself and Abbas in the Nine Lives. A fraught drop and a long fight and the Nine Lives was already tense enough to begin with. They fought well together but everyone says that was testament to Altaïr and not to _them_ (another resentment that sat and simmered away each and every time others discussed it and it got back to Abbas either in person or through drifting) because then and now, Altaïr brings nothing into the drift. Except that day. The drop with the Master Sword the longest fight he'd been in up to that point and he'd been pushing harder as Abbas goaded – there had long been a struggle for control, a struggle Abbas had always lost – until the memories Altaïr pushed down bubbled forward and he was helpless to stop them. Slipping through his fingers like sand and Abbas chased and he could not catch him, could not pull the memories back when their minds were a shared pool. Ahmad, tearful and ashamed in Altaïr's room, his pilot uniform rumpled and hanging awkwardly from his shoulders. Ahmad blaming himself for Umar's death, for not watching, for not being a better wingman. Ahmad cutting his throat. The rabbit chased and caught and gutted and Altaïr wrenched out of the drift, Abbas screaming and the Nine Lives grinding to a halt. The end of their partnership. The kaiju defeated, yes, but the Master Sword gutted. Kadar gone. Malik's arm so badly burned from the circuitry that they had to cut it off. A LOCCENT officer now with a sharp tongue. Altaïr deserves it.  
  
So there is Malik too, it would be wrong not to count him in this. And Ahmad too.  
  
Six when the Nine Lives ends up as damaged as the Master Sword. The names branded upon his eyelids: Maud, Umar, Ahmad, Adha, Kadar, Malik. He drifts. He is no longer the favourite and they grow ever smaller, isolated and desperately alone as the great triumphs of engineering and human ingenuity fall to ruin, rusting and languishing in a bay. Sometimes it makes him laugh; just like kaiju, sticking out of the sand and silt like old bones. He drifts and wanders and wakes with phantoms. Al Mualim's hand on his shoulder. Ahmad's tears and how red the blood was against the steel of his knife. Abbas' rage, so white it blinded him, the burn of his mind being ripped from the calm blue. He dreams of Adha's fingers in his hair as he whispered that she was a daughter of kings and gods and prophets, late nights in the mess with Malik scoffing at Kadar's worship of him, the excitement of finally getting to take part in a drop with the great Altaïr. Some days he cannot bear to look at his left arm.  
  
They build a wall and he wants to scream. They build a wall when walls will not stop them, when those monsters have ripped through buildings and jaegers and flesh and lives. They build walls and he drags himself back to the Shatterdome, past some warm welcomes because he is one to be respected, he brought down six kaiju, you must remember that. Past the sneer from Abbas and the jovial words of a technician whose name he cannot remember who laughs and says yes the things they say about you. But he is called brother. Perhaps that is why it hurts all the more when he sees Malik in LOCCENT, Malik spitting nails in his rage before Al Mualim silences them both before dismissing Malik so he might speak in private.  
  
Al Mualim smacks him across the face with an open palm, castigating him mercilessly, each word a brand. Once Al Mualim was a father and once Altaïr had a mother, a father, then another, brothers, a lover. He has never had them all at once. He has only himself, six lives and the shadow of nine, this unknown third where he cannot know if the ninth will be his own. There are times when he hopes and, filled with shame, prays that it is. He has lived these years without purpose, selling his skills from the training room practice floor for those who want to turn a quick fortune and again, he has still been steeped in kaiju. There are people who slip in, harvesting the corpses, scavengers peddling cures but there are few jobs and he cannot build this wall as he wonders who would allow them to waste such money, as he listens to the news where he can, passing beggars in the makeshift homes and each night he sees more bodies. Kaiju blue. Bad way to go. He is quick and clean when he kills, the kaiju are the same really in the way they demolish all in their path, no lingering, no suffering, not like these deaths of coughing and choking. One of the cults inhale the vapours believing it will deliver them enlightenment, will make them servants of the angels. Madness. Such madness. But he remembers lessons from long ago, about fiery angels with many heads few of which, if any, were human, eyes upon eyes, fire and swords and he grants them a quick end when he meets them. It is for Adha. These are ones he would make suffer but she would not want that, she only wanted to choose her path and to learn more, delighting in each scrap and old book she found.  
  
Without a jaeger – though the Nine Lives apparently did not languish, she is looming, a revenant, this reminder of the lives stacked against his own – he is used for his other skills, the ones taught under Al Mualim's critical eye and guiding hand. Then there is what he learned on his own. How to watch. How to listen. How to be invisible. How to pick locks and pockets, how to find unique ways of making his way through the city and he isn't surprised that Al Mualim knows; the old man has likely had eyes on him ever since he left in disgrace because that is how it is and was and will always be. It is how they have kept any sort of edge. Eyes and ears to guide Al Mualim who always has the top of the line jaegers, the newest tech, the best of the very best for his shatterdome. It's how they keep track of the government and the funding and the cults that spring up, the same sort who murdered Adha but they are changing, evolving as the kaiju did and it chills him to the bone when he remembers in the few hours of sleep he gets the words Adha once spoke. They used to debate it late into the night, the connection between pilots and jaegers, wondering at the kaiju and where they came from exactly, if they were perhaps around before – she liked to talk of Atlantis and Titans, primordial chaos and he would counter with how man always sought to explain what they could not with higher powers and how much could be explained by science and better understanding now. He wishes she had been there after that fateful day with Abbas when the monster had ripped and clawed at where they were housed. They are not just beasts, they are cunning, they are smart, they are closer to gods than some outside the cults are comfortable with.  
  
They are hunting them down and he has been sent to see why the jaegers are being stripped of their funding. We cannot hide behind walls, those are the words Al Mualim sent him away with but it rings hollow when Altaïr has spent so much of his life behind the thick walls of shatterdomes, a world within a world, the protectors they look to, Al Mualim always the wise old man to the point that most of them cannot conceive of him being anything other than he is now: old, grey, one eye scarred and clouded. It suits him to be that way the same as it suits the pilots and other workers in the dome to be quiet, to be almost like monks, heads down, anonymous, famous only amongst themselves compared to so many others who are recognised. They're all symbols but could anyone outside this shatterdome tell one pilot apart from the other? He thinks not. Having been on the outside since the day he left, Malik screaming at him and clutching his bloody arm after Al Mualim cuffed him, he can see why others are wary – where some are symbols, lauded by the media, by politicians, by the rich and powerful, the shatterdome he comes from is intimidating, otherworldly in almost the same way as the kaiju and now they are the last ones left. All the other pilots and their jaegers are gone, fallen to kaiju or cults or found dead, he's seen the headlines, heard the whispers and it's why he makes sure he keeps his sleeves down over his arms to hide the old scars from moments of circuitry burning him. He keeps his left hand curled in a fist inside a pocket or hidden under his sleeve. It's barbaric, he supposes, the traditions of this dome but it's shared by each pilot, the removal of the left finger, the searing pain that flashes through them in each drift, a shared pain they can recognise and anchor themselves with.  
  
He usually lies and says he lost it in an accident whenever anyone asks. At a deli, in a factory, in a bar. The story changes, the reality doesn't.  
  
Today he prowls through a boneslum, hauls himself over precariously built housing, damp warping wood, corrugated steel rusting and staining his fingertips and knees. Salt and smoke mingle with damp air and in places he's careful because they gut kaiju here along with the fish from the harbour and the stench of it makes him want to vomit. It's not the fall so much as the landing, fish guts and dead bodies at best, heaps of kaiju remains that no one can salvage at worst. He's not going to go like that. The violence of these areas is unsurprising, all the more reason to be quiet and stick to the shadows and off the streets when he can, too many thugs cracking their knuckles and shouting threats. He doesn't particularly relish the act of killing unless there is a reason to it but the thugs take anyone unknown who walks with a certain surety to his gait to be a challenger and it is so easy to curl in, defend himself against their heavy fists and then to slip a knife between their ribs, pulling back when hot blood trickles down his fingers as they swear and gasp. He leaves them to whatever fate is willed to them. They are not targets, he does not have a duty to steady them, to cup the base of their skulls with one hand as he lowers them to the ground, bent forward to hear their last words rattling out of them amidst the croaks and splutters of their death. It's like every other time he's gone after the cults – the dangerous ones because some worship the kaiju quietly, heads bent in prayers, guttering candles cupped in their palms, not the ones who scream like zealots and run towards the ocean when the kaiju come, waiting for their deliverance, rapture lending their eyes an unholy gleam – but then it suddenly is not. There are guards. Guards in smart suits, not the gang colours with taped knuckles and guns picked up on the black market. These are men with money, earpieces, dark glasses at night. He slides down, something wet and foul splashing up his leg when he lands that he doesn't want to identify, slips round the back and there's a smart car, top of the line. It amazes him that they claim there is not metal and components enough to keep the jaeger program afloat but there is enough to build this wall of theirs and fancy cars and guns. People in this boneslum starve. The cries of mothers with their gaunt faces, skin stretched tight over bone as they beg with hands outstretched for whatever coin can be spared. They have lost everything to the kaiju – their homes and jobs, their health and relatives and now they lose more to the wall with so many chasing after it, desperate for a chance at food even though he's heard of the deaths on that wall. The followers who must wait, who are no better off but will cling to any sort of hope.  
  
And yet here is a bald man adjusting his immaculate suit, followed by someone else, their dark hair scraped back from their face into a severe bun, both entering into a known cult base together through the back entrance. He waits, breathes, flexes his wrist, rolls his shoulders and counts until he's sure they're far enough inside that any commotion outside will be of no concern then strikes. He finds another building to scale and strikes, one leap, blade out and his fall is cushioned by the dead man beneath him, free hand grabbing a throwing knife that he sends flying into another throat. The man falls dead with a thump. A simple enough lock to pick – he could barge it with his shoulder, perhaps kick it but there are armed men, there are guns, he cannot take the risk – and then he's inside, dodging a shot, throwing a knife at an eye, rolling forward, a slice to the back of a knee to bring another man down as he disarms him, slits his throat then up on his feet to jam the knife in deeper, twisting once before he yanks it free. The rest goes in much the same way until all is silent save the music they're playing, something that sounds of waves crashing on the shore, the deep moans of whales and under it all a strange buzz that gets under his skin and makes his scalp itch. He cleans his blades, tucks them away, wipes his hand on a suit and avoids the few cameras. Something is wrong here – the cults are not like this, they do not associate with men such as the one he saw so he looks for somewhere to listen, to try to find out what's going on and locates a balcony. This was a theatre once, he thinks. There is a stage of sorts, moth-eaten curtains, dust motes in the air, the scaffolding for the lights beginning to buckle but the seats remain for an audience but tonight they are empty. On the stage one of the cultists – the leader he supposes judging by the strange clothes he wears, the way they're stained the same blue as kaiju blood (they might have been dyed in it, stranger things have happened) and flashing with some sort of lighting just like the beasts he remembers fighting – and the bald man. He can just make out the outline of the one who followed the bald man in – French, the words are too low to hear well from here but the accent is very definitely French – but nothing more. So lightly guarded.  
  
He risks moving closer.  
  
"-pressure must be kept up. Awareness and being fresh in the minds of the press and the people..."  
  
"It is difficult to keep up recruits, perhaps with more incentives..."  
  
"We have given you wealth enough, you cannot seem rich in this place when you lead the cult."  
  
"You have need of us-"  
  
"You can be replaced." The threat is unmistakable and Altaïr wills himself not to tense, to listen for all that he can but to be prepared to strike. "What is coming will be glorious, you will see. You believe?"  
  
"Of course!" The cult leader sounds affronted by the suggestion that he is not the most devout.  
  
"Then you will do all that you can to support us. Soon brother. Soon the jaegers will be gone and the angels will come, we will bring about a new age, you and I." He cannot be hearing this. Surely he is mistaken and perhaps he took a blow to the head he did not recall but no, they are in league, this cult and this man though it turns his blood to ice in his veins.  
  
"And the wall?" The cult leader presses and even from here Altaïr can see just how crazed his eyes are. Perhaps that is the reason for the security – either his beliefs or exposure to kaiju toxins have driven this man to the brink.  
  
"We have made sure those in power believe that the wall is the only solution and that we must weigh the costs, play the numbers game. But it will fall."  
  
"And the world will be swept clean." The reverence in that voice is more than he can bear and he leaps out, the cult leader screaming and lunges for the man and now he can see him he knows him, Robert de Sable, advisor in some capacity to one of the men backing the decommissioning of the jaeger program in favour of the wall. It's a miscalculation though because before he can end the man's life he finds himself hurtling backwards, dust and mould thick enough to choke him as he crashes through the back of the stage and into old props left behind, the force of it knocking the breath from his lungs, his vision white at the edges.  
  
He forces himself to his feet, shaking his head to clear his vision as he coughs and groans, stumbling over chunks of splintered wood. His head throbs, his back is on fire and when he tries to straighten his right arm, needles of pain shoot down from his elbow to his fingers; just jarred, nothing more severe, he knows the difference between many kinds of pain. But there isn't time to take stock, he has a man to find and he scrambles for the stage, the cult leader gone but he's not the one he needs, he isn't the one who can give him answers and he's already behind when someone lunges at him. The figure in the shadows, he remembers now, bringing an arm up to shield himself as he pivots on the ball of his foot before kicking out at their knees but they jump and drive their elbow into his chest and he sees stars. It's not a dignified fight. No rules of the training floor, not the strange honour of a street brawl, this is brutal, seeking an advantage until he manages to press them back to the side of the stage and headbutts them. His opponent goes limp, sagging in his grasp and he lowers them both to the floor, leaning forward to clamp both wrists in his right hand, his knife in the left in case he needs it, the pressure of one knee on their chest should it be needed. He can finally breathe himself and take stock and get a look at the guard and-  
  
"A woman?" He murmurs, unable to help himself.  
  
"Surprised?" Amazingly she still sounds cocky, coughing and trying to break free but he's sure she has double vision at the least and he puts a little more weight onto the knee on her chest to hold her still. She kicks out and he's glad of the blade in his hand, cold steel to the white of her throat, a thin line of blood welling when she swallows.  
  
"You being a woman matters not," it's honest because he has one care right now and that is Robert, tracking him down and finding out what secrets he'll spill with his last breath. "You are not who I'm searching for," he continues, blade to her throat and she snarls, all teeth and curses.  
  
"You tried to kill Robert," she snaps back, still struggling even as he grips her wrists tighter and presses down with a knee on her chest so she can't breathe as deeply.  
  
"You know what he aims to do! The kaiju cannot be stopped by a wall! You know this isn't right!"  
  
Her struggles lessen and he can see the conflict, the way she bites her lip and refuses to meet his eyes. "I'll tell you where he's going," she concedes as the fight leaves her, rattling through an address not too far away and he takes a moment to thank whatever watches over him that he has the information without a fight. "There will be guards though I doubt they'll pose much of a problem for you."  
  
"Thank you." He is sincere because it is easier this way, finding out information without a beating, without having to force it out of someone.  
  
"What will you do with me?"  
  
"You are free to leave."  
  
"What?" She sounds amazed and despite himself, he grins.  
  
"You are not my target, you have helped me, I will not take your life."  
  
"You don't want to hear me beg, assassin?"  
  
"I'm not an assassin," he tells her simply as he gets to his feet, wary lest she strike out at him but the moment has passed and he can feel an understanding of sorts. "Get out of here and I will see an end to this."  
  
He doesn't listen to whatever else she might say, he's already on the move.  
  
Outside, the chaos is to his advantage. He's spotted, of course, but he pushes through the forming crowed, heads for the closest rooftop and runs even though his thighs burn, the cold air painful to breathe. They don't follow him and in time the shouts tail off, swallowed in the typical night sounds of the boneslum and he slides down, his legs barely able to hold him and doubles over. Once he trained for twelve hours or more a day, once he guided a machine as though it was an extension of himself. Now he stands in a dirty alley, covered in sweat and blood, gasping for breath. _I am alive_ , he thinks, _Robert shall be the seventh_. He knows he should return to Al Mualim but this address is temporary, Robert must know he is a hunted man so he takes a breath, stretches as much as he can and starts moving again.

* * *

  
  
"It's done then."  
  
He lowers Robert's body, all the guards and associates with him dead too and Altaïr is so sore, so tired he wants nothing more than to rest. Tonight has felt like being in a jaeger once more, pushing against a relentless storm, unable to give up even though his body is screaming in protest.  
  
"What do you know?" Robert manages to laugh, blood painting his chin when he does. "You are a pilot, ex-pilot, disgraced. You do his bidding even now don't you? We all did. Myself and more but you didn't know, did you?"  
  
"Be silent," Altaïr snaps, irritated by the laughter, the mockery in the voice of a man speaking in riddles when all he wants is to know what is going on, "I will have answers or nothing."  
  
"You were his pilot and now you are his eyes and ears, you hunt down rumours even though you disappeared when the Nine Lives fell to the kaiju. More than nine will fall like the walls to the very same. Thousands, hundreds of thousands. Millions. All planned by one man."  
  
"Who?" He demands, not cradling Robert as he has done with so many others but clutching him roughly by the shoulders, knuckles white.  
  
"Would you kill him as you killed me? All these others?" Robert coughs again, struggling to keep breathing but his eyes are steady and somehow he manages to swallow thickly. "Al Mualim."  
  
The world spins off its axis. The shock is the same as being ripped out of the drift in the midst of a fight. "No, he is the marshall!"  
  
"How is it a marshall has eyes and ears everywhere? How does one marshall acquire the very best in pilots, in jaegers, in equipment? The best people and trainers? How is one dome able to flout the rules of the rest so it stands alone?"  
  
"He is the marshall," Altaïr repeats but his voice wavers. _He is my father, the only one I have_ , he thinks, heartsick. "He must know – he was the first marshall."  
  
"Exactly. The first. The one who slipped behind the scenes, designed it all. And now it is only you and I. I kept you safe." A savage smile twists the dying man's features grotesquely. "As long as I lived the truth remained hidden. There was a lie to shield him but no more. You see what he plans. To let the kaiju devour and destroy, to herd them all in."  
  
"There are still jaegers..." But he can see what the old man plans and his fingers go slack. Robert drops the last few inches to the floor, coughing again.  
  
"You are next for the graveyard."  
  
It's the last murmur from Robert, one last rattling breath and Altaïr is left alone with the dead, only his own shallow panicked breath for company as he fights the urge to be sick. It cannot be and yet he cannot deny the truth. He picks himself up, murmuring a prayer over Robert's body as he staggers out and runs straight into the woman from before.  
  
"He-"  
  
"Gone. Dead."  
  
"Bastard," she whispers but there's no true venom to it. "Where are you going?"  
  
"To the dome. It does not die with him."  
  
"Oh shit," she hisses and all he can do is nod in agreement. "Are you hurt?"  
  
"It doesn't matter, I have to go."  
  
"You can hardly stand you bloody fool, come on."  
  
He can't fight her, he's too dazed, the adrenaline gone, the weariness of the previous fights and the wounds and hurts he's sustained taking their toll as well as the realisation that the man he has trusted and looked up to all his life is behind so much hurt and misery. That he _wants_ to see the deaths of others to further his own cause. Before he knows it she's bundling him into a car, the engine revving and he must zone out because she slaps him across the face, not hard but just enough to bring him back to the present.  
  
"I need directions and you to talk us out of anything."  
  
"There's an us?"  
  
"You killed my boss, I should see this through before I kill you." He smiles, points her a quicker route than the one she's taking and readies himself for what is to come. "Do you have a name?"  
  
"Altaïr, and you?"  
  
"Maria."  
  
"You fight well."  
  
"Says the man who beat me."  
  
"I've fought much larger than you."  
  
"How da-"  
  
"I fought kaiju," he clarifies and the car screeches to a halt, sending him flying forward before he manages to catch himself.  
  
"You're a pilot?" She asks with something close to awe before she realises how she must sound and starts the engine again.  
  
"Was. The Nine Lives."  
  
"Robert told me of that, I'd always wanted to be a pilot but working with him..."  
  
"There are still kaiju. We cannot let them pour money into this war. We cannot let them win."  
  
"Suddenly it's we?" She sounds amused and he shrugs, regretting it when pain flares in his shoulders.  
  
"Your actions speak for themselves. We will need more pilots and a jaeger remains."  
  
Mercifully they reach the gates and something is wrong. Very wrong. There's no security checkpoint for them to pass and Maria senses it too, leaning across to open the glove compartment for a gun. They drive in, park and every inch of the shatterdome inside _and_ out should be busy, people coming and going, a hive of activity. Instead it is silent, just the waves and the sound of Maria cocking her gun startles them both.  
  
"Where is everyone?" She whispers, raising her weapon as they both peer out into the darkness.  
  
"I don't know, inside I'd imagine. But this...this is wrong. This place should not be like a tomb."  
  
"Inside it is then."  
  
Altaïr is the one who makes to open the door but he stumbles when someone else tugs on the other side, greeted by Abbas, a sneer curling his lip.  
  
"Traitor," he breathes, stepping closer. "And who is this?"  
  
"Let me through," Altaïr growls, motioning for Maria to lower the gun she's pointed at Abbas' head as soon as he appeared.  
  
"No," Abbas steps forward.  
  
"He has deceived us. He worked against us."  
  
"Why should I believe the lies that spill from your mouth?"  
  
"We were co-pilots once Abbas! We were like brothers!"  
  
"You were always the master's favourite, the chosen one," Abbas mocks and when he moves again, Altaïr motions for Maria to move and she does so, taking a step closer to the door where Abbas cannot see her. "What you hid from me – all those years Altaïr!"  
  
"Let it go, it is over and done with, your father died a good man Abbas. Remember him as he was."  
  
"All I remember is what I saw in your mind." The pain in the other man's voice has him remembering that night, how red the blood was, how the knife glinted in the dark against Ahmad's throat. "All I see is that. All I hear are the lies about my father dying as a good and brave man, just like yours."  
  
"Do not make me do this Abbas," he tries one last time, a plea from a man who was once like flesh and blood to him.  
  
"Traitor. You will not slay Al Mualim."  
  
"Maria! Find Malik, _now_!" It's the last shout he manages before Abbas flies at him, forcing him to duck under his arm. He's fought hard tonight but instinct has him moving, remembering each and everyone one of the tells Abbas had. In truth, Altaïr was always the better fighter, less likely to allow his mood or temper to change his movements, able to watch and judge but Abbas has always favoured aggression, not knowing how to hold back or to feint in truth. They shared a mind and a jaeger once so by no means is it an easy fight and Altaïr is almost as surprised as Abbas when he suddenly the heel of his hand is pressed flat to Abbas' abdomen, the blade sinking deep. "I'm sorry brother," he whispers, lowering Abbas to the ground, foreheads pressed together.  
  
"I will see him..."  
  
He pulls the blade free and wipes it clean on his own thigh. _Such a waste_ , he thinks and he has never been more disgusted and betrayed in his life as he feels now with Al Mualim. For now though he must leave Abbas as he is, he has a mentor to find and inside the shatterdome, racing through familiar halls, taking the stairs instead of the lift until he skids to a halt at Al Mualim's office. _We called them his chambers_ , he remembers, himself and Abbas and later Malik and Kadar. They were right. They were so right.  
  
Al Mualim is waiting for him, fingers steepled. He looks no different to how he did when he dispatched Altaïr only hours ago – how can it be that the world has changed so much in so little time? It still turns, he still breathes but nothing will be the same as it was, _he_ is not the same.  
  
"Your schemes are at an end old man."  
  
Al Mualim's smile is the same as the beasts that rose from the ocean.

* * *

  
  
Nine Lives. Maud. Umar and Ahmad. Adha. Kadar and Malik. Robert de Sable, Abbas, Al Mualim. Nine Lives forever altered by Altaïr. He does not count his own, it would not be right when it stems from him, when he is the agent of change. Nor does he count Maria's for her destiny is hers alone.  
  
_We are equal_ , her voice in his head, white and blue, the Nine Lives reborn in their partnership.  
_In all things_ , he thinks back or perhaps it is her or both of them.  
  
Malik's voice over the intercom rouses him. There are kaiju to kill, a world to save, Maria at his side and yet the prophecy of this jaeger is lifted. He is not who he was and he is glad of it.


End file.
